Reach your audience at their local time.
Schedule sends based on your recipients' timezones to ensure messages arrive at an optimal local time.
Table of Contents
- Using the timezone send feature
- Reviewing current timezone data
- Updating your recipients' timezones
- FAQs
1. Using the timezone send feature
🛠️ How it works:
- When you are ready to send, select “Review and Send” in the top right corner of the editor.
- Under “Send time” select “Schedule for later” and select the date and time.
- Choose your timezone behavior.
- Send based on recipient's timezone: Your edition is delivered at the scheduled time in each recipient's local timezone. Delivery begins at the International Date Line and continues through each timezone.
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Start from a specific timezone: Delivery begins at your chosen timezone and wraps to the next day for timezones that are located before the start time.
For example, if you select 9am PST, PST recipients receive it first at 9am. EST recipients would not receive the edition until 9am EST the following day. - No selection: Leave both options unselected to use standard HQ send behavior.
- After you confirm your date, time and timezone behavior, click out of the pop-up modal to save your selection, review the remaining delivery settings and click “Review” to progress through the send flow.
2. Reviewing current timezone data
🛠️ How it works:
- Navigate to HQ > Audience > Recipients.
- Click the columns button in the top right corner and enable the Timezone column.
- Review the column for each recipient. If timezone data is available, it will populate in that column. If the field is blank, the recipient does not have timezone data assigned.
3. Updating your recipients' timezones
Unlike other services that approximate timezones based on IP events, HQ uses your audience's actual timezone data. This means your recipients receive sends based on their real location, not potentially inaccurate VPN or IP-based estimates.
There are a few different ways to bring timezone data into HQ, and we're actively building additional options. In the meantime, reach out to help@axioshq.com with any feedback or questions as you try out these features.
3.1 Syncing data with an existing Directory Sync/HRIS integration
🛠️ How it works:
- Navigate to HQ > Settings > Integrations and confirm which source system you are using for your HRIS or directory sync.
- Check with your IT team to confirm whether that system has a timezone attribute available for your recipients.
- If a timezone attribute is available, reach out to help@axioshq.com with your source system details and we'll help you map it to HQ.
3.2 Bulk updates with a CSV upload
🛠️ How it works:
- Navigate to HQ > Audience > Recipients.
- Click Manage recipients and select Export CSV. This will download a list of all your recipients, their source, and any existing attribute data.
- Add timezone data to the Timezone column in the exported CSV.
- Re-upload the CSV by navigating to Manage recipients > Import CSV.
- Once the CSV is processed, the timezone column in HQ will reflect the updated data for each recipient.
3.3 Editing individual level attributes
🛠️ How it works:
- Navigate to HQ > Audience > Recipients and find the recipient you want to update.
- Click on their name to open their detail page.
- Click the edit icon next to the Attributes section and scroll down to Timezone, use the dropdown selector to assign or update their timezone.
- Click Save once you're done editing.
3.4 Assign a timezone attribute to your segments
🛠️ How it works:
- Navigate to HQ > Audience > Segments and select the segment you want to update.
- Click on the segment name to navigate to the detail page.
- Click the Set timezone button under the segment name to associate a timezone with this segment.
4. FAQs
What timezone formats does HQ support?
HQ's baseline format uses IANA timezone names, which are identifiers like America/New_York or Europe/London. We also support the following formats:
- Abbreviations: PST, EST, CT
- UTC offsets: +05:30, -06:00
- GMT format: GMT-05:00 Eastern Time (New York)
How will my analytics change if I send based on timezones?
Top-level analytics remain aggregated into a single edition row. To review send status by timezone, expand the edition row in your analytics view.
What if I didn’t add timezone data to my recipients?
Recipients without timezone data will default to EST.
How does deduplication work with timezone sends?
If the same email address appears in your audience with different timezone data, that recipient will receive the email more than once (once per timezone). For example, if one record is tagged PST and another has no timezone data, the recipient would receive the edition twice: once during EST hours (the default) and once during PST hours. To avoid this, ensure each email address has consistent timezone data in your audience.
Can I make updates after the first timezone batch has already sent?
No, once a send is in progress you won't be able to make any more changes or cancel it.
Can I use timezone send for test sends?
No, test sends are immediate. If you'd like to trial run timezone sends, please create an edition to test with and send it to a small group of people who are located in different timezones.
If a recipient's timezone is updated after a send is scheduled which timezone is used?
Recipients get batched at first send time. If a send is scheduled a week out the recipient's timezone can be updated within the week and will be considered on the day of the send.